August 2 2016

City Slickers 2016

Experiences as a Leader, Ideas    2 Comments    , , , , , , , , , ,

Our Feelin' Good patch from this year
Our Feelin’ Good patch from this year

City Slickers 2016 is in the books as of a few weeks ago!  If you don’t know what City Slickers is, it’s an almost week long summer camp that our service unit puts on.  It’s hosted by our local United Methodist Church of which I also attend.  This year was the 10th anniversary of the camp and my second as one of the Junior leaders. Our theme this year was “Feelin’ Good” which centered around Healthy Living so that girls could use Cookie Dough toward payment for the camp.  There are three areas that service units can center programming around in order to be reimbursed by our council for the use of Cookie Dough – a cookie rally, STEM, and Healthy Living.  Continue reading

July 29 2016

If I Were CEO of GSUSA!

National Operations, Opinions    3 Comments    , , , , , , , ,

gsusa overlordOriginally I saw this question posed in a GS Facebook group and wasn’t planning on writing up anything, but then Sylvia Acevedo, the GSUSA Interim CEO, asked for input via the GSUSA blog.  So here we go!  I wrote this very quickly because I am still trying to catch up from being gone all last week due to our City Slickers camp plus we are finally going on vacation so I’m trying to get a lot done in a small amount of time.  But procrastination calls!

Before getting underway with my list, I would first rename my title from GSUSA CEO to GSUSA Overlord and make a cape with this spelled out on the back.  In sparkly lettering.

Now that I’ve gotten that silliness out of my system, I’ll be serious.  Continue reading

July 27 2016

OFFICIAL Fail

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me    1 Comment    , , , ,

It will be a few days until I completely recover from our service unit’s City Slickers camp.  I plan on reviewing it at some point in the near future and sharing the various projects, field trips, and patches/badges we earned.  In the meantime, here’s something that happened right before the camp:

official online storeThe other day I visited the GSUSA OFFICIAL Online Store to purchase a copy of Outdoor Education in Girl Scouting (excellent book BTW – I highly recommend it).  As always, I look around to see if there’s anything else I can add to the cart since shipping can be steep.  Plus you can never have enough Girl Scout items – contrary to what my husband thinks.  Continue reading

July 16 2016

Mind Numbing Boredom

Reminiscing    1 Comment    , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Whew, I’ve gotten pretty serious here lately.  It took me a while to write the Generation Gap post (including a couple of rewrites), so I’m going to go with something easy.  I haven’t shared a Troop 20 story in a while, so allow me to reminisce before I hit City Slickers (our service unit’s summer camp) next week.

Like I said in a post from last year, kids today have no idea how good they have it.  They have compact entertainment centers right at their fingertips.  We had nothing but our own imaginations.  Warped by mind numbing boredom. Continue reading

July 11 2016

Generation Gaps & Leadership Outcomes

National Operations, Opinions    6 Comments    , , , , , , , ,

Again??
Again??

As I mentioned in my Tradition post, I recently finished reading Tough Cookies by Kathy Cloninger, the CEO of Girl Scouts from 2003 to 2011.  I won’t rehash my first impression or caveats since I already did that in the first blog post about this book.  Also, if you’re curious as to what my background is as a Girl Scout and volunteer, you can read about it here (4th paragraph down) to see where my perspective lies.  With all of that out of the way, I’ll move on to another commentary about what I see affecting us today based on the philosophies shared in Tough CookiesContinue reading

July 6 2016

BIG NEWS is Coming on Wednesday!

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me    2 Comments    , ,

BIG NEWS

So tonight at 9:30pm, GSUSA announced on Facebook that BIG NEWS is coming tomorrow (Wednesday)!  This set the GS Facebook world abuzz with everyone wondering what it could be?  My cynical side says it’ll probably be some commercial partnership, but then my crazy side gets all excited like it’s Christmas Eve thinking of all of the possibilities!  Oh GSUSA, you big tease!  Continue reading

June 27 2016

Additions to WaBak Posts

Traditional Stuff    No Comments    , , , , , , ,

Oh those crazy kids!
Oh those crazy Camp Northstar kids!

This past weekend my youngest daughter and I attended the Girls Weekend Out/Me & My Gal session at Camp WaBak.  It’s a one night/one day sampler type session to give the parents and girls a brief taste of camp life.  I’ve gone two years with each daughter making this the 4th time I’ve gone (and the last time).  I did it hoping that my girls would want to go to camp and as a way to ease them into it.  I hope it will work with my youngest (we’ll find out next year!) but it didn’t really sink in with my oldest.  I guess every kid is different.  When I was growing up, I always dreamed about going to a resident camp and even being a counselor, but we couldn’t afford it, so I stuck with the summer day camps my council put on.  They were fun, but it wasn’t the same as being able to get away from home for an extended period.  There definitely would have been some wacky hijinks at Camp Northstar if I had been there.  Instead, I lived vicariously through the 80s run of camp movies.  Continue reading

June 22 2016

Paris Mountain Hike

Hikes & Outdoors    No Comments    , , , , ,

parismountainsignIt’s summer in the South, which means I don’t get to go hiking because it’s so frickin’ humid and hot.  (But my husband and I are going to go on July 4th, so we’ll see how that goes!)  So instead, I’m going to look back at the hike at Paris Mountain State Park that Becky and I went on in late March.  Spring was just about to kick in so it was warm in the sun, but when the wind started blowing, it got pretty chilly.  I must have taken my second layer on and off about four times. Continue reading